In the build up to the 2017-18 NCAA Men’s Basketball season, ESPN released a ranking of their 10 best point guard prospects. One name missing on that list was Trae Young. And ESPN wasn’t the only one to forgot about him.
The hometown kid took the six minute drive from Norman High School to the University of Oklahoma and has brought the spotlight with him. Young is just the fifth McDonald’s All-American to sign with the Sooners and the first since another Oklahoma-bred talent, Blake Griffin, in 2007. Known as a prolific shooter, Young has fit the bill through five games by shooting 38.6 percent on 8.8 3-point attempts per game. His style has invoked memories of a scrawny Stephen Curry shooting heat-seeking missiles at the rim during his days at Davidson.
Young turned a lot of people into believers during his three game performance at the PK80 Invitational last week. Each game Young upped his scoring production from the previous one. He capped off his coming out party with a 43-point explosion in a win over the Oregon Ducks.
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During the tournament, Young averaged 34.6 points per game and 6.7 assists per game while shooting 51.7 percent from the field, 39.2 percent on 3-pointers and 94.2 percent from the free throw line. Listed at a favorable 6-foot-2 and 180 pounds, Young doesn’t possesses elite size or athleticism for his position. Instead, he’s made himself into a cerebral player that uses the threat of his outside shooting to make the game easier for himself and his teammates.
The deep 3-pointers will naturally lead to Curry comparisons, but Young looks more like a mix of Curry and Steve Nash — it’s never bad to be compared to two back-to-back MVPs. As easily as he’ll shoot a 30-plus foot jump shot, Young will also facilitate for his teammates. Sooners head coach Lon Kruger has entrusted the offense to him fully from the start of the first game, and Young has not disappointed.
However, if Young is going to continue to succeed at Oklahoma and take that next step to the NBA, there is one area of his game that he must continue to work on: Finishing at the rim.
At first glance, Young is shooting a phenomenal 60 percent at the rim on 35 attempts. Yet, when you take out transition attempts and limit the attempts to only half court situations, that percentage drops down to an abysmal 45 percent on 20 shots. For comparison, Curry shot 55.1 percent (in 17 games registered on Synergy) his junior year and Damian Lillard shot 49.6 percent as a senior.
Young’s size and average athleticism come into play here. The game against Oregon was his first test against a team with multiple players that have NBA-caliber athleticism. In that game, Young’s struggles at the basket were on full display.
Getting past his primary defender wasn’t an issue for Young, but he didn’t always properly navigate the rotating help defenders. One of his main problems is exposing the ball too much. You can see examples of this in the first and last play. On the strip, he leaves the ball away from his body as he drives and allows a help defender to slap it out of bounds for a turnover. When he gets blocked, he doesn’t shield the ball with his body and allows the defender to time his release.
In the remaining clips, Young gets a pass stolen as he attempts to throw a lob through a thicket of arms, tosses a floater over the rim and misses a layup against two defenders in transition. While these may seem like minor flaws to point out in a dominant 43-point game, these are the kinds of plays he will need to make consistently in the NBA to be effective.
It wasn’t all bad against the Ducks. When he went to the basket against one defender, he had much better results:
He shows off a much better floater (and from further away) in these sequence of plays, which is going to be a tool he’ll need to make the most of for the rest of his career à la Tony Parker.
There is also the final clip that shows him splitting three defenders and finishing at the hoop. His agility and flexibility are on full display, and he will need to continue to develop in this area if he wants to be a respectable finisher at the rim.
Finally, a big part of Young’s game off the dribble is his ability to play through contact. It’s in a few of the clips shown so far, but it is even further illustrated by his free throw attempts. He’s averaging 9.4 attempts per game in five games.
As I mentioned above, Young does a great job of playing with and through contact. He combines his ability to change speeds on his drives with a clever trick of initiating contact with his defender. Young hasn’t mastered this like James Harden, but it has been very productive to start his college career.
Young has shown that he is must-see television through five games. If he can now sure up his play in the paint, he could leap up draft boards in a single bound. As Oklahoma winds down it’s non conference schedule, there are two games that stick out in terms of projecting Young’s play to the NBA: Dec. 8 vs No. 14 USC and Dec. 16 vs No. 8 Wichita State. It will also be a treat to watch the Sooners face off against Colin Sexton and Alabama on Jan. 27.
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Young’s ability as a shooter will earn him a spot in the league, but if he is able to improve his play in the paint, he could one day follow in the steps of the two players he emulates in Nash and Curry.